


Built with a Heart Broken from the Start

by sonno a caccia (retronxnt)



Category: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Character Death In Dream, Cussing, Flashbacks, Gen, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Rants, Sad, Self-Hatred, Trauma, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 10:17:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21336616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retronxnt/pseuds/sonno%20a%20caccia
Summary: Jackal (Ryad Ramírez Al-Hassar) finds himself in the past again, desperately trying to look back for the truth, only to wake up and beat himself up over it.Heavier cussing, some mentions of gore/death, may be triggering.
Kudos: 5





	Built with a Heart Broken from the Start

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a song reference obviously if you get it but it's not a song fic.  
Note from the original posting: "its mostly bad bc at some point i go on a rant as usual in my unposted fanfics so,,,, sorry but i put a lot of effort into symbolism so like idk please enjoy??" Yeah seems about right.  
Also wrote it before Jackal's full bio was discovered so canon pretty much invalidates half of this. Take it with a grain of salt I guess.

_ Dark. Typically, yes, you'd expect it to be dark in the middle of the night, dumbass. But where am I? _

Somehow he knew it was early October, and somehow he knew it was late into the night. It was plain to tell it was probably around 2 or 3 A.M.  _ Come on, it should be easy to tell where you are, just take in the scenery. _

It hadn't consciously registered but there wasn't really a scenery. Just darkness. There wasn't any focus. Not yet anyway.

Suddenly a voice seemed to barrel through the air and echo into his ears. Very familiar, and few voices really were to him. He couldn't actually make out what that voice was saying, though. Just a murmur, perhaps he wasn't paying attention. How unusual.

Slowly the scene began to come into focus. The air was pungent with an unpleasant mixture of rotting garbage, cigarette smoke, and gasoline. The casual memory of an alleyway came into view. Floor damp from the heavy and recent rain, yet also from the gasoline, he noted by the swirling colors mixed in with the puddles.

Tainted newspaper clippings laid on the ground everywhere, some dampened by the rain, as the colors of the once black ink began to smudge and slide across their pages. But he couldn't actually read them. They were in Spanish, he could tell, but he couldn't fixate on what they actually said. What stories these faded wads of paper actually told. Maybe it didn't matter.

Then everything stopped. He stopped walking and the echoing footsteps came to a close. But, God, were they loud. Every step felt like a hammer on his ear drums, rattling his entire brain and probably the onset of a usual headache. At least now they ended and he didn't have to wince to fight off the pain.

Then he looked around. He was alone. Surely I wasn't the only one walking this way? What about the other voice? The newspaper clippings were gone. All he could see was the brick road beneath him and the swirling polluted water pooling at his feet.

Things were absolutely quiet but his eyes continued to take in more detail.  _ Every. single. little. detail. _ A silvery coin two feet away, deflecting the dim glow of a half broken street light hanging just overhead. A red lighter and an unhealthy pile of cigarettes beneath it, all smoked to death and no chance of being relit. Yet a few of them were still sizzling. These were important. Why? he couldn't begin to guess. Then it began to dawn on him that the water was not just mixed with gasoline, but yet a third ingredient. The air was not just strongly smoke and waste and fuel. A final member of the party arrived in his senses. Blood.

With a blink of the eye all of the newspapers were back. Thousands upon thousands of clippings littered his small circle of space- and they were all damp with the wine colored essence of someone's life as well. Beginning to be afraid, he bent down on his knees and picked up a feathery piece of news.

_ Police in Search of Three Individuals on Account of Multiple Robberies and Potential Mu _

Another one.

_ released a statement and sketches of the possible perpetrators after the unfortunate murder of an unknown woman at the local _

Read more.  _ More _ . Another, again.

_ Citizens in this area report hearing screaming and crying in the middle of the night, supposedly a half hour after 2 A.M. We will continue to report on this sto _

_ Read it again! _

It felt like he was impossibly reading five different clippings at once. He wasn't even retaining what they said. It began to overwhelm him as his nostrils continued to fill with the disgusting scent of fresh blood. And when he could take it no longer, as though the smell and continuous stream of information would cause him to pass out, it just  _ stopped. _ He looked up as a man stood over him, his features shaded by the night.

" _ Faisal..? _ " an innocent voice whispered to the night.

As soon as that small voice dared disrupt the quiet, the whole picture went straight to hell.

Like a clap of thunder, everything changed. The man that was standing was now dumped on the floor, clutching his arms to himself as his viscera began to be in places it shouldn't. He made no noise, he didn't even move, but his blood poured across the entire area like a flood. 

He flicked his head up from the man and saw three distant figures. One had a knife that glinted and caught his eye, with a lit cigarette in his other hand. His vision began to blur, possibly with tears, but he got used to having this happen anyway. He strained to see their faces but the more he stared at them the further they became. All he could see was a wretched, toothy smile. He looked back down at the body beneath him and struggled to cradle him into his arms. Tears started to well in his eyes without any emotion. It began to rain again, but it didn't feel like a typical sprinkle. It felt like someone was pouring a tub of water down fiercely, making it hard to breathe. Even harder, as it smelled so strongly of gasoline. 

"F-Faisal?  _ Estás ahí? Por Dios _ , tell me you can hear me, I-- I need to know, I need to know who they a-"

The brother snapped and reanimated, for just a moment.

"You can't fill the void. It'll never come to light," Faisal said harshly. He tried to respond, but his attention averted the figures in the back again. Their faces were completely hidden. Although they had no eyes, it felt like they were staring straight into his soul. The figure with the knife threw their cigarette straight at his side. He tried to scream no, for something to hold on to,  _ just wait a minute and let me investigate, I'm begging you _ -

Fuck.

The real world came back all around him. Thirty- _ fucking _ -years and that dream has never skipped a beat. Yet it was different every time. He was far too old to be bothered by it, no longer waking up in sweat or in pain, or even in any distress. Just a blank, tired expression. Tired of not sleeping, tired of getting this garbage when there was sleeping, tired of trying to feel any emotion over the whole thing again. Were it legal and were it possible, he'd kill a man just to get one full night of sleep.  _ Hilarious idea. You should have been a comedian. _

The redundant and utterly useless alarm clock wasn't sounding, but he could tell by the atmosphere he hadn't missed it yet. Something to look forward to, perhaps. At least it was consistent. At least it never failed on you. Oh brother.

He has long since attempted to recall on his occasional dreams, and easily decided to never try to interpret them. Plenty of people along the road have said that it's good to remember. It's good to dismember and take apart and analyze those parts of the dream. 'You're good at analyzing things, afterall, too good, at that!' It's good to think about what it means and it'll leave you at "peace."  _ Yeah, nice try, but peace is a long forgotten term in my vocabulary. _ If making a conspiracy about some spiritual ass backwards meaning to a dream would leave him at peace, he'd buy the whole stock. Some people really need to get off their high horses and realize some people are better off not knowing.

And what more was there to know? Faisal Ramírez died on October 8th, 1985, and he'll die again and again in his mind. Replaying the whole scene like a video of evidence. Criticizing every detail. A silver coin. The uneven brick over there. The exact hue of the annoyingly broken street light some feet away. Somehow, the more he dreamt about it the more details he found, and yet, the more details he forgot. ' _ Where am I?' Seriously?  _

_ You've been back down that alley at least fifty times, and that's an understatement. You visit it every year you can manage and feel like a disaster when you can't slip in enough time just to look at it. And every year it gets lamer. Some years you just show up, blink, and walk away. Why? Because nothing will change! Hell! the longer it gets the less evidence is actually there. There's plain nothing there. That coin's been taken by some street rat since day three. They changed the light back in 1991. Yet you  _ really _ can't remember the place? Fucking Ceuta, you simp. _

Insulting himself has been a frequently recurring episode in his late night show of 'How Many Days Will Ryad Stay Awake Before Getting Sent to a Hospital?' This episode plays along regularly with fan favorites such as 'Dwelling on the Past', 'Overanalyzing Literally Everything', 'God You're Pathetic', and the like. But what's bothering him now is why, seriously,  _ why  _ is he having this dream again. The whole thing has been speculated to hell and back. There's nothing new to uncover about the scene. Maybe a decade ago he would have appreciated it. It had helped him find a few more clues to add to the ever growing (yet not truly progressing) case he'd started ever since it happened. 

Maybe… maybe dreams weren't made to help you find the clues about what physically happened. Maybe they leave clues about your subconscious, or whatever it's called. Maybe some of those high horse people really did have it figured out. Well, even if it is telling him something new about his thoughts, it's doing no good now. Faisal died thirty years ago. If anyone needed help, it was the hardly an adult, still kind of hurt, and innocent Ryad that also died thirty years ago. He's forgotten how to feel about it. Forgotten how to cry. There's no point in holding on to that emotion, it only gets in the way. But if that's true, then  _ why? _

Faisal has been the only real consistency. Yes, the cigarettes were always there. Yes, the rain was always there. Yes, the timing always played out the same way. But things began to shift as time changed his perception and recollection of what actually happened. No, he doesn't really think gasoline was there. No, he could see their faces at some point, even if his eyes were blurry from the tears. No, no, no. Faisal is the only thing that remains.

Faisal has always been there. Always. Even when he was just a toddler, he still remembers Faisal caring for him. There was maybe even an essence of some kind of "family" back then. And when that fell away, over and over again, Faisal was always there for him. Faisal reminded him what it felt like to be loved. Faisal reminded him what a friend was. Faisal reminded him that it wasn't his fault. He promised.

No.

He wasn't wrong, about that. It probably wasn't his fault that their families changed every other year. It probably wasn't his fault that they circulated in the foster system for so long. But you can't let time change the perception this time.

It was your fault he died. We decided this. We decided that because you weren't awake enough, you weren't strong enough, you weren't capable and smart and willing enough- he died. And thus you'll never sleep again. You never know when it's going to happen again. Why even try to sleep if you're just going to dream about all that again? If you had just been alert, it would have never happened. He'd still be here. For God's sake, I know! We decided this! Shut up and stop deciding again!

He tossed his pillow over his face and held it there, knowing it wouldn't really drown out the loudness of his mind. Such are the thoughts that keep him from sleeping. He'll keep thinking them until the end of time, it seems. 

Actually managing to startle him, the redundant and utterly useless alarm went off. 6:30 A.M. Annoyed and with lethargy, he got up and gently turned off the blaring sequence that told him what time it was every single day. It really didn't serve its purpose in waking him up since he was almost always awake before it. But his light sleeping was easily disturbed by it, if he didn't stay awake the night before. At least it was consistent. At least it was always there for him. 


End file.
